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The Lands of Todes Grube

A friend of mine asked me to redo his map that he's been using for the past 30 years in his D&D campaigns, I happily obliged him having spent many a night enjoying the campaign as a player. (If you care to see the his original map its in the WIP thread)

Having just discovered the guild and being awed by the wealth of information and talented artists. I decided for this map I'd specifically use some new techniques I was reading over in the tutorials sections. In particular I used Midgardsormor's clone technique for the all of my landscape icons. A simple, yet effective method, I almost feel silly not having thought of it myself. I also used RobA's weathered paper tutorial to spice up the background textures (thanks for the grunge brush links in that tutorial) I also picked up little things here and there just from looking over all the talent that keeps being posted daily, too much to even keep up with!

All the elements are hand drawn and scanned, a few are brushes from drawings. I used PS CS3 to put it all together and create the textures. Used a old version of Micromedia Freehand (I really need to update that) to create the crests.

Thanks to everyone for all the comments, critiques and help in the WIP thread.

Wow, this is great. Everything is clearly defined and real easy on the eyes. And the details like the legend and cool-looking compass rose fit in quite well. The only thing I can think of that could improve this map is some icons that look a little more hand-drawn. The current ones are fine and easily readable, but maybe a little too clean-looking, compared to the rest of the map.

It's a funny thing, but everytime I think I've seen every variation of those particular forest and mountain styles, someone comes up with another one. It's lovely (you should bring yourself to profantasy's attention - they might be interested in this), I love the clean chiselled mountains and the classic forest look. Really nice stuff.